Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jacob Mchangama Free Speech 20221029

Welcome to the Cato Institute. For another nurse continuing series of book forums this particular one is has been ive been eager to look forward to it for many months because i knew about this book for some time now. I knew about the podcast that came first with it. This is jacob machangamas free speech a history from socrates to social media, which is available. Now. Im been available for a couple of weeks and is getting a very strong and appreciative audience. I would say in the United States and well find i think its audience in europe. Also where these issues. So we thought it was great. Weve known jacob for quite a while and wed great to have a book form and and who better to have to have just a conversation among likeminded people with some differences then john roush from brookings. So let me give you what im going to do here is give a brief bio you may know both of these people from their work of both of our people and by the way, im john samples of Vice President here at cato if you dont know me, and then i thought jacob would tell us something about the book and then we would talk about the issues and then turn to q a in a little while. Okay . Jacob machangama is the founder and executive director of the danish thing. Just yeah and the host of the podcast clear and pleasant danger a history of free speech not surprisingly. I highly recommend that to you. Its a very interesting podcast series and is available still hes riding on free speech has appeared in the economist the Washington Post Foreign Policy and many other outlets around the world. He lives in copenhagen denmark. John rouse is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program and the author of eight books. Writing that really made me feel bad. I just ate books. How do you do that . They and then many articles on Public Policy culture and government his articles to have been highly influential as you may know. Hes many brookings publications include the 2021 book the constitution of knowledge a defensive truth. As well as the 2015 ebook which i think more and more is coming into its own political realism how hacks machines big money and backroom deals can strengthen american democracy also writes often for the atlantic and his recipient of the 2005 National Magazine award. The industries equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize so im eager to get started here. Jacob could you tell us something about the book about what led you to write it also the podcast and and some of our the themes that you found and what is really i have to say just in a striking uh effort at research. I mean you really conquered a very demanding very broad set of issues and thats very hard just to work with right because its 2,000 years. First of all, thank you john. Thanks to cato for hosting me one of the few sort of live events ive been doing on this too as i really appreciate that opportunity also because its almost exactly two years since i was in washington, and that was also speaking at a conference on i think the 9th or 10th march in john you were i think we were having a dinner at a time where you know seen in hindsight might not have been the most respond. Its the fools paradise. It could have been sort of a super spreader event. And yeah, so what let me to write this book, you know, i was born in in cosis secular liberal denmark and in my youth free speech was sort of taken for granted. It was the air that we we breathed and and sort of in the 90s and early 2000s, so i didnt really think about it and i think most people didnt because it was not under threat. It was just part of daily life and then denmark became sort of the epicenter of a global battle of values over the relationship between free speech and religion when someone who later became a good friend of mine fleming also the editor of a danish newspaper published a number of cartoons depicting the the Prophet Muhammad which which led to a Global Crisis and and fleming and many others still live with around the security because of threats from from extremists, but that forced many days and i think many in europe. And maybe around the world to sort of really think what what is this principle that we hail and that, you know as a sort of an enlightenment value and the foundation of democracy. Is it really that important and a lot of people said, you know, maybe its not so important. You know, these cartoons are punching down on a vulnerable minority and this is not what free speech was supposed to to be about and that sort of surprised me shocked me a little bit and then what ive also saw was that generally people on the right was were sort of free speech absolute is when it came to the cartoons and then we had a number of governments who then adopted a number of restrictions on religious free speech. Basically target, not not formally but everyone knew it was targeted at sort of extreme as muslims and that limited free speech and i was sort of saying this is goes against the very principles that we held up during the cartoon affair but a lot of people on the right side. Yeah. Well free speech is important, but in order to you know, safeguard our fundamental values. We have to limit the free speech of these particular extremists and that sort of led me. To really try to investigate the whole history of free speech. Whats at stake . What does it mean . What does it mean when society is based on free speech . What does its absence . I mean is this principle really so, you know, is it really worth . You know all the fuss and and i found that it was but i think you know looking at present debates about free speech. You can have a more detached attitude rather than sort of the culture war tainting everything when you look at it through the prism of the past and so the book really starts. I i locate the origins of free speech in the athenian democracy some 2500 years ago where the athenians had two concepts of free speech. One of them being isagaria. So equality of speech which is exercise in the assembly where all freeborn male citizens had a direct voice in debating and passing laws, but perhaps even more of even more consequence was the second concept called parise which means Something Like uninhibited speech which allowed a culture of runs and free speech, which so you know, if you were a plato you could set up an academy and you could you could basically, you know teach philosophy that that was not specific particularly fund of the democracy that allowed you to to philosophize you could have foreign life foreigners aristotle set up shop. And until the tolerance war a bit thin socrates could heckle people and roast them in the agora the marketplace and in in athens and and the athenian. Statesman damustan is i think came up with it. You know, he said, you know in athens youre free to criticize the athenian constitution and praise the spartan constitution, but in sparta sort of the bitter enemies of the athenians, you can only praise the spartan constitution and i think that really is still is the litmus test of free speech. Are you able to criticize the the political system under which you you live . So so i you know the athenian system obviously by our standards was not radically egalitarian, but by its time it was very much an egalitarian free speech idea, and i i sort of contrast that with the Roman Republic where there was a much more elitist topdown approach to free speech so you would have senators like cato like cicero who believed in free speech, but mostly sort of for the senatorial elite not the plebs and the and the roman citizens did not have a right to address assemblies the way that that athenian citizens did and i think these two concepts leaders and and egalitarian free speech have have been intention throughout the history of free speech, especially when when the public sphere has been expanded either through technology be it the Printing Press the radio the telegraph and today social media or through political development. So, you know, it could be a democracy giving the vote to to women to the poor and property list to religious racial minorities. The you have always been an elitist pushback against this idea and a dread an existential dread that the unwashed mob was unfit to be given access to to information that had to be filtered by the elites because otherwise everything would would go to hell and basically and so thats that. Thats a very important sort of thesis in in the book. Another one is related to that. Its that i argue that that many today see free speech as entrenching unequal power relations. I argue that free speech. In fact may be the most powerful. Of human equality that human beings have ever stumbled upon and that every single oppressed group or minority has relied on free speech the practice and and principle to further their cause and stake a claim for equality and in this country. I spent a bit of time on how Southern States in the 1830s adopted the most draconian censorship laws in American History in order to to counter abolitionist literature and an so take virginia. Of course in 1776, virginia became the first state to adopt a bill of rights even before the declaration of independence, which said that press freedom was the ball work of liberty, but then in 1836 with virginia passes a law, which says Something Like you know that you its a crime to deny that white masters have a right to property in their black slaves and its also a crime to inculcate resistance to slavery and you know among the whole laundry list of ways to try and counter abolitionist ideas on the other hand you had abolitionist like Frederick Douglass who himself of course was born as a slave but who argued for a universalist idea of free speech which he said would and would basically destroy slavery and he argued that that free speech is not depend on the color of your skin or the size of your wallet and that the right of a free speech is a very precious one, especially especially to the oppressed and and i would say that that you know is is a another theme that that runs through the book, you know, im staying at a hotel here. At Lafayette Square very close to it and and youll see a placket there showing how in 1917 a number of women womens rights advocates were were burning and effigy of president woodrow wilson, and they were arrested and fined many of these women who were basically arguing for the right to vote and i remember thinking about that in in 2018 when i was living on the Upper West Side with my family and i took my son to a museum and when we went outside tens of thousands of people were protesting most of them women wearing these pink hats and and shouting up sanities at the president of the time and the nypd was there to save god their First Amendment right to criticize the the president in terms that were probably more aggressive than those that went before them and i thought you know, i thought that was, you know, really a sign of how free speech had furthered the the rights of groups that had previously been persecuted. Of course, john has written very el about how that was also the case for for the Gay Rights Movement for instance. So when you see the huge increases in acceptance and tolerance of interracial and gay marriage, i think that that was not achieved through censorship and and putting people biggest in jail. It was to a large degree one by people using the First Amendment rights to to do activism to appeal to come in humanity and so on and the last thing i might want highlight is that ultimately, i believe that free speech. The health of free speech at any given nation depends more on a culture of free speech than law. So the first the First Amendment was ratified in 1791. It hasnt changed the wording, but you know in 1798 you could go to jail for criticizing president john adams, and that would be supported by people like hamilton and washington the federalists whereas with with jefferson and madison on the other side of that conflict then you know you go to to as i mentioned slate laws prohibiting abolitionist literature, but if you go to world war one, you know, the Supreme Court is completely fine with sending people to to prison for 10 or 20 years for a posing american involvement in in world war one you have the red scares and so on and and you really have to get into sort of the 50s before free speech is is consistently protected and and reaches the the threshold by the end of the 60s that with sort of brandenburg. Is ohio that very very high threshold for for limiting specific specific viewpoints and i think that reflects a change in cultural attitudes in norms and among americans because the wording hasnt changed and you see that actually also in in famous works like on liberty by John Stuart Mill. He is at least as concerned about the stifling norms in victorian england as he is about the the censorship of the magistrate and warns that you know when side is tendency to impose its values on descenders is is a danger to free speech. George orwell says some of the same things as so so and thats why i worry for for this country because in my view both sides if there are there probably more than two sides, but but you know eating away at the cultural of free speech in hyper polarized partisan nature of american politics which i which i fear will ultimately have downstream effects that might affect how the First Amendment is constitutional protected whether in 10 or 20 or 30 years. So that was a an executive summary. Very good john some comments of well, the first comment is is thank you john. Thank you cato. Its even though i think most of our viewers are online. It is nice to be in a room with actual human beings. So thank you all i feel very good about that john. The only thing i dont feel good about is it in your introduction . You didnt mention that my first and seminal work on this subject now 29 years old kindly inquisitors. The new attacks on free thought was published by whom there goes by Performance Review the Cato Institute Cato Institute. Yeah, and its even worse than that because the second edition john and i corresponded frequently after because i was the publisher of it for okay, thats right. How could i forget that and dont forget the audiobook narrated by penn gillette. Yes, its spectacular. Anyway, i so i have a spectacular i owe a big debt to cato because at the time no one i couldnt get a commercial publisher for the book. And here we are 30 years later. Its a fair to say a classic which is what we call books that are ignored for 25 years before anyone responding is because he was getting so much money from chicago that i was really really excel sold and the second edition. So quite well, so i thought id just say three drinks quickly. The first is about the book the second is about what we learned from the book and the third is about the environment wherein right now first thing about the book is is get it by it read it. Its not only readable and comprehensive. Its the only thing like it unbelievably until this book came along there was nothing to read that took you from the very beginning of the ideas of free speech right up to social media. Its all here the ancient greeks Medieval Times where there were occasional outbursts of very interesting thinking only to be suppressed the enlightenment the long history of seditious libel which reappears again and again, its a fantastic book. I just cant say enough about it. Its a service it will be a touch. For years to come and its also a lot of fun. Second thing what i learned from the book or maybe relearn from it. Is that the idea of that the government . Should not only allow. But actively protect speech and thought which is seditious vulgar offensive wrongheaded bigoted or just plain wrong the idea that government should actually protect that. Is the most crazy counterintuitive wacky social idea of all time bar none . If you if you pop that proposition to someone on the street, theyll say whats the matter with you . And its only redeeming feature is that its also the single most successful social idea of all time bar none. It gives us the peace the freedom and the knowledge that build this society but because it is so deeply counterintuitive it took. 2500 years to build in the form. We know it and as jacob just said the current form in the United States is very young. Just extremely young. Its the environment in which the founders. Wrote the First Amendment was much more restrictive than todays. So what i remind people of and what i hope they take away from this book is that defending and protecting this radical wacky proposition requires getting up every morning and explaining it from scratch. To a whole new generation and then our kids will have to do that and their kids and their grandkids every single day and we just need to be cheerful about that because as this book shows you were doing incredibly. Well. Actually, im not sure jacob would agree with that. A compared to for example, my grandfathers time the greatest greatest novel the 20th century ulysses was banned by the government and confiscated on on the docks couldnt happen today. Right up at the present. However, we have i think a couple challenges. It really been the paradigm and challenge jacob and me and john and all of us. Because theyre quite unconventional were used to thinking of free speech as something that we protect against intrusion by sensors, primarily the government. Free speech in terms of Legal Protections is stronger in america right now than id say. Its ever been anywhere in the world. Would that be safe . Yeah, i think thats a very accurate and i think it may be about to get stronger with the current Supreme Court. The kinds of challenges we face however dont really fit that box. One is disinformation. And the other is whats often called cancel culture the systematic use of social coercion to chill in silence. Disinformation is not about censorship. Its actu